Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains Is the Unnatural": Power, Secularization, and G.K

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Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends Article 14 and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference

5-31-2012

"Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains is the Unnatural": Power, Secularization, and G.K. Chesterton's Villains

J. Cameron Moore Baylor University

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Recommended Citation Moore, J. Cameron (2012) ""Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains is the Unnatural": Power, Secularization, and G.K. Chesterton's Villains," Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016: Vol. 8 , Article 14. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/14

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INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of

The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and

THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana

“Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains is the Unnatural”: Power, Secularization, and G.K. Chesterton’s Villains

J. Cameron Moore Baylor University

Moore, J. Cameron. “Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains is the Unnatural: Power, Secularization, and G.K. Chesterton’s Villains.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1

“Take Away the Supernatural and What Remains is the Unnatural”: Power, Secularization, and G.K. Chesterton’s Villains

J. Cameron Moore Baylor University

In his 1905 book, Heretics, G.K. distortion and perversion, the unnatural. Chesterton claims that the spiritual is It is this negative denial that I want to inextricably linked to the whole of human focus on because it provides a helpful way life: “Take away the Nicene Creed and of reading many of Chesterton’s villains. similar things, and you do some strange Wielding a conception of power wrong to the sellers of sausages. Take which denies given limits, the malefactors away the strange beauty of the saints, and in many of Chesterton’s novels attempt to what has remained to us is the far re-create cultural spaces free from stranger ugliness of Wandsworth. Take traditional religious practices and beliefs, away the supernatural, and what remains and these projects always end in is the unnatural” (99). This is a unnatural suppressions of human theologically loaded statement. It freedom. Thus, in The Ball and the Cross demonstrates Chesterton’s intuitive sense the English society which will not allow of the gratuity of being and puts MacIan and Turnbull to argue about Chesterton in company with the nouvelle theology suffers Professor Lucifer to jail theologians. Rather than join the neo- innocent citizens. Likewise, in The Flying Thomist hypothesis of some state of pure Inn Lord Ivywood attempts to recreate nature which might have existed separate British society in his own image and in from the order of grace, Chesterton the process makes alcohol illegal and recognizes that through the Creation and begins to establish polygamy as an the Incarnation the supernatural both acceptable social practice. undergirds all of existence and provides Beyond creating cultural spaces the natural order with an end beyond which are inimical to human flourishing, itself. Taken positively, Chesterton’s in their denial of the supernatural claim about the supernatural and the Chesterton’s villains do violence to their unnatural means that the universe is own humanity. By the end of Manalive, bursting at the seams with the divine; Dr. Warner appears a walking corpse, humdrum objects such as lamp posts, whose long dead spirit cannot begin to pillar boxes, and coat tails can sweep the respond to the life which Innocent deals unsuspecting viewer up into an ecstatic out of his revolver. In The Flying Inn experience of transcendence in the blink Ivywood’s Nietzschean assertion of the of an eye. Indeed, Chesterton’s heroes are will drives him insane. His intention to constantly caught up in these bursts of make the world over again leads illumination. However, his claim is ultimately to his own imbecility. phrased as a warning. Any attempt to do Likewise, Professor Lucifer’s satanic away with or suppress the supernatural nature is clearly revealed at the end of leads not to the natural but rather to The Ball and the Cross, and in this he

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appears the prototypical Chesterton conviction grows that power simply antagonist. Full rejection of the demands its own actualization” (83). For supernatural is finally nothing more than Guardini this conception of power is an embrace of the demonic. finally demonic. Now, I want to organize this Particularly, Guardini argues that exploration into Chesterton’s villains in response to the kind of power wielded around Romano Guardini’s reflections by the modern world, culture itself has about modernity, power, and culture in become “non-cultural”. Under the grip of his seminal work The End of the Modern objectified power, culture will cease to World. Romano Guardini (1885-1968) provide security and instead will be was a German priest, theologian, marked primarily by “danger” (89). The philosopher, and social critic. If you threats to safety which previously arose haven’t read Guardini before, you might from the natural world now arise from think of him as a kind of European within culture itself through the Wendell Berry; he shares many of Berry’s unrestrained expansion of power. concerns regarding technology and power Nature now, however, has emerged as they bear upon questions of nature, once again into history from within culture, and what it means to be human. the very depths of culture itself. In published The End of the Modern World Nature is rising up in that very form in 1950, Guardini argues that power is at which subdued the wilderness—in the root of the dissolution of the modern the form of power itself. All the world. Modern man saw a radical growth abysses of primeval ages yawn in his ability to manipulate both himself before man, all the wild choking and the world, according to Guardini. growth of the long-dead forests This increase in power has led to radical press forward from this second redefinitions of man, nature, and culture. wilderness, all the monsters of the The modern world valued power as an desert wastes, all the horrors of the indicator of “progress;” man’s increasing darkness are once more upon man. control over himself and his environment He stands again before chaos, a signaled clear gains towards “security, chaos more dreadful than the first usefulness, welfare and vigor” (82). Yet, because most men go their own Guardini claims, power itself proved too complacent ways without seeing, strong for the goods towards which it was because scientifically-educated supposedly directed. Thus, the twentieth gentlemen everywhere deliver their century has seen an incredible speeches as always, because the development in “man’s power over machines are running on schedule being,” but this increase has not been and because the authorities accompanied by “the strong character function as usual. (92) needed for exercising this power” (82). We do not yet have “power over [our Guardini’s vision here seems at first to own] power” (90). Even more resonate more with Cormac McCarthy’s frightening, power, as it is currently dark visions of the world than with understood, justifies itself as an Chesterton’s jovial “beer and skittles” impersonal necessity. We have agreed to personality. However, society presents a a conception of power, defined as serious threat in much of Chesterton’s increasing technical control of ourselves fiction through its unrestricted exercise of and our world, as an unstoppable force power. In The Napoleon of Notting Hill independent of human will, and the whole of London turns out against the consequently outside the realm of human defenders of one small street. In The responsibility. In Guardini’s words “the Flying Inn Dalroy and Humphrey Pump

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are constantly on the run with their illegal agree to an understanding of power as pub sign. And in The Ball and the Cross impersonal necessity, Chesterton English society forces MacIan and provides villains who are clearly Turnbull to flee to various wild places in responsible for their abusive pursuit of order to conduct their duel. In each case, power and the current state of their culture itself proves dangerous. The societies. protagonists of each story struggle Chesterton’s antagonists certainly against a “civilized” order which is deadly subscribe to the modern definition of to the human spirit. This gives many of power as both necessarily progressive Chesterton’s novels something of a and unbounded by any limitations. Lord dystopian atmosphere. Ivywood from The Flying Inn However, unlike many dystopian demonstrates this conception of power novels, Chesterton provides both clear and its consequences most clearly, so I responsibility for the dystopian state of will focus on him primarily in the affairs and a program for resistance and argument that follows. The same case victory. The fact of culpability in could be made though, I think, for many of Chesterton’s fiction mirrors Guardini’s Chesterton’s other villains. insistence that this new presence of The Flying Inn is the tale of an danger within culture is not without Irish naval captain, Patrick Dalroy, and an authorship. Power always entails a English innkeeper, Humphrey Pump who responsible agent, he argues, even if the save England by traveling round the complex systems of modernity tend to countryside with a keg of rum and a obscure responsibility and promote wheel of cheese. Under the influence of power as autonomous and necessary. his Turkish allies, Lord Ivywood “There is no being without a master” effectively bans alcohol by first passing a according to Guardini; when man takes bill which forbids the sale of alcohol being out of the natural order and without a proper pub sign and then incorporates it into the realm of human destroying all the pub signs in England. freedom, he assumes responsibility for it. All the pub signs that is, except one. And it is here that I think Guardini Dalroy and Pump manage to save the sign provides important insight into of “The Old Ship,” Pump’s pub, and they Chesterton’s antagonists. There is always tour the countryside covertly, displaying a responsible party for the abuses of the pub sign wherever they stop and power in Chesterton’s fiction. In the dispensing their wares. Dissatisfaction midst of his dystopian societies a central with the new legislation grows among the figure or figures stand as parents of the common people of England, and when perverted order. Thus while the Dalroy discovers that all the rich and President of Nicaragua might admit at the privileged people are still drinking their beginning of The Napoleon of Notting Hill spirits though they deny the poor man his that the whole modern world is against beer, a revolution breaks forth which his small country, in the action of the ends with a climactic battle and the defeat novel itself, it is Buck, Barker, and Wilson of Lord Ivywood and his allies. who are against Pump Street. Likewise, Throughout the action of the although there is a sense of international novel, Ivywood grows increasingly political movements and forces in The fanatical in his quest for power and Flying Inn, Lord Ivywood sits at the center progress without boundary or restriction. of these machinations, and it is his home His vision is ever more abstract and and his person that the revolutionaries separate from the everyday world that his attack and whose defeat restores normal subjects and constituents live in. Midway social order to England. Rather than through the novel he brags that his

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“adventures shall not be in the hedges maidenly; even if there is and the gutters; but in the borders of the something fishy about her social ever advancing brain” (255). This conduct. [. . .] Don’t you see this privileging of abstraction over concrete prime fact of identity is the limit set experience is typical of many of on all living things? (253-54). Chesterton’s villains. Indeed a basic “No,” says Ivywood, “I deny that any limit typology of the abstract, sophisticated is set upon living things” (254). This villain opposed to the fleshy, active hero chilling assertion places Ivywood is evident in much of Chesterton’s fiction. squarely within Guardini’s definition of In , Innocent Smith wears green Manalive modern man’s exercise of power. and wants merely to love the hedge and Guardini claims that based on non-human the lamppost that God has given him to definitions of man and non-natural guard, while Dr. Warner is “bland and definitions of nature bored,” writes on “The Probable Existence of Pain in the Lowest Organisims,” and “Man will [. . .] face an existence in possesses “the kind of brain that most which he will be free to further his men desire to analyze with a poker” (4). lordship of creation, carrying it In The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Adam even to its last consequences. This Wayne’s red headed, sword carrying mastery will be open to him figure with “bold blue eyes,” contrasts because he has permitted himself violently with the “blank handsome face utter freedom: the freedom to and bleak blue eyes” of James Barker; the determine his own goals, to bleak, handsome face of the man who dies dissolve the immediate reality of “loaded with honors without having things, to employ its elements for either amused or enlightened the mind of the execution of his own ends. a single man” (10, 41). But Ivywood takes These things he will do without any the rejection of the physical and the consideration for what has been limitations that it entails to extremes, thought inviolate or untouchable in even by the standard of his fellow nature. (73-74) antagonists. Ivywood exhibits exactly this kind of Obsessed by his vision of the disregard for the natural in favor of his future, by his desire for Progress with a vision of progress. He dissolves whatever capital P, Ivywood denies all limitation of he likes in order to further “the execution any kind. In a debate with his cousin, a of his own ends.” poet, about the value of exaggeration, Such denial of created limits is at Ivywood argues that “everything lives by its root a rejection of the supernatural. In turning into something else. refusing to acknowledge the giveness of Exaggeration is growth.” The poet the world, Ivywood denies God. His replies: disavowal of createdness is necessarily a “But exaggeration of what? [. . . ] rejection of Divine authorship. Ivywood You can combine up to a certain is quite explicit about this fact. When point; you can distort up to a asked who Ivywood thinks he is that he certain point; after that you lose the can fundamentally alter the world so identity; and with that you lose easily, he declares “The world was made everything. A Centaur is so much of badly, [. . .] and I will make it over again” a man with so much of a horse. The (288). This terrible declaration reveals Centaur must not be hastily Ivywood’s Luciferian conception of power identified with the Horsey Man. which is predicated upon a presumed And the Mermaid must be equality with God.

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Lord Ivywood’s denial of the world, to use a phrase from Orthodoxy. supernatural, however, leads not to the We must reclaim an understanding which natural order but to perversion and sees the world itself not as merely the distortion. Denying the spiritual ends in natural site for an unlimited expansion of unnatural suppressions of human technical control but as a gift, a grace, freedom. Not only does Lord Ivywood which everywhere invites us into further deny men drinks, he agrees to the participation. In a world gone mad on enslavement of captured prisoners, and power, we need to re-read the landscape begins to establish polygamy in England. imaginatively, to offer a vision of limits Moreover, his denial of the supernatural and boundaries as freeing and enabling. leads to his own distortion. Midway Chesterton provides a model for through the novel, Ivywood’s quest for this kind of reading. His novels always political control leads him to break his celebrate the small, the local, the word, the one honorable thing left to him. particular; he is the champion of He emerges from this experience “the limitation. “Art is limitation; the essence naked fanatic; [who] could feed on of every picture is the frame,” he declares nothing but the future” (220). This in Orthodoxy (45). Chesterton brings this power-hungry fanaticism drives Ivywood love of limits and boundaries into the to imbecility. Unable to cope with his heart of the modern city, and becomes in defeat at the end of the novel, Ivywood many ways the poet of the Industrial City. relapses into a solipsistic second Through the lens of the limited and childhood, unaware of the world around particular, Chesterton is able to view the him. Our final vision of the superman industrial world as enchanted and consists of his playing with scraps of enchanting. In the poem “Modern weed, oblivious to anyone and anything Elfland” he argues that fairyland survives but himself. in the midst of the smog-filled streets of Thus, Lord Ivywood provides a the Industrial Revolution. Where the good model of the basic characteristics of speaker of the poem expects to find Chesterton’s villains. Their modern fairyland, he discovers instead that “lo, conception of power as control of being within that ancient place / Science had without moral or ontological limits entails reared her iron crown / And the great a denial of the supernatural. This denial cloud of steam went up, / That telleth always results in unnatural suppressions where she takes a town” (233). Yet the of human freedom and dignity. The speaker is still able to discover the Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Ball and the strange magic of fairyland in this new, Cross, and The Flying Inn all chronicle monstrous environment: “But cowled their respective protagonists’ attempts to with smoke and starred with lamps / That heal these disordered societies through strange land’s light was still its own; / their combat with those responsible for The word that witched the wood and hills the disorder. / Spoke in the iron and the stone” (233). The value of such a reading of This is the kind of re-imagining of the Chesterton’s malefactors is two-fold. world that Chesterton offers in response First, it provides a vision which cuts to the new wilderness of power in which through the rhetoric of the impersonal, we live. Reading the modern/post- inevitable, necessity of ever increasing modern, technological-industrial land- power. Secondly, and more importantly, scape as fantastic begins to re- Chesterton’s villains’ denial of the appropriate the chaos of this new world supernatural reminds us in order to do by giving it a human measure. We must battle with this disordered understanding make a home for ourselves in this new of power, we must take up the flag of the landscape, and one of the best ways to do

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this is through recognizing the value of Works Cited limitation and investing that landscape with the mythic and the fairy. Set against Chesterton, G.K. Manalive. Mineola, New villains who deny limits and the York: Dover, 2000. Print. supernatural, Chesterton’s heroes Chesterton, G.K. “Modern Elfland.” Collected encourage us to this kind of reading of the Poetry: Part 1. San Francisco: world in which grace lives in the very Ignatius, 1994. 233. Print. Vol. 10 of heart of nature and everywhere the world The Collected Works of G.K. of created things draws us up into the Chesterton. Ed. Lawrence J. Clipper. divine. Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995. Print. Chesterton, G.K. Heretics. London: John Lane Co., 1905. Print. Chesterton, G.K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1996. Chesterton, G.K. The Flying Inn. Mineola, New York: Dover, 2001. Print. Guardini, Romano. The End of the Modern World. Trans. Elinor Briefs. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI, 1998. Print.